If the organization you’re running suddenly finds itself with 30% of its nominal clients chronically no longer engaging with your services, you’ve got a problem.
An existential one, as even the non-philosophers among us now term an issue that could lead to your, well, non-existence.
And since California schools have a chronic absenteeism rate of 30% in the new post-COVID-19 environment, where are the alarm bells about our public education system’s ability to survive?
Because they clearly should be ringing in our ears.
As CalMatters reported last week, “Nearly a third of K-12 students statewide were chronically absent in 2020-21, more than three times the pre-pandemic rate. Some school officials fear that pattern will become the new normal.”
The nonprofit news source’s education specialist, Carolyn Jones, reports: “As a new school year gets underway in California, districts are desperately trying to lure thousands of missing, tardy and truant students back to the classroom in what many view as a pivotal moment for education in California.”
She quotes Heather Hough, director of Policy Analysis for California Education, calling this out for what it is: “This is a crisis.”
Of course it is. But in an almost tragic way, the realization that there is such a huge number of no-shows might be a good thing for public education in California. Because surely all of us can see the size of the crisis in these numbers.
And “it’s not going to change until we do everything we can to get kids back in school 100%,” Hough continues. “What we all fear is that this will become the new normal … It is hard to overstate the importance of this issue, and it is absolutely a pivotal moment.”
Before the pandemic, CalMatters reports that around 10% of students in California’s public schools were habitually missing at least 10% of their classes in a school year, which amounts to about 18 days. That is the number that the state uses to define “chronically absent.”
“But COVID-related school closures, remote learning and quarantines have created a new habit for millions of families: optional, not mandatory, daily school attendance,” Jones writes.
But, hold on here, many older Californians may be thinking. Doesn’t state law literally require children to be in school?
Indeed it does. People aged 6 to 18 are mandated by a compulsory education law to be in school — every day.
So clearly the combination of indifferent and actively bad schools plus the non-attendance habits fostered by COVID has turned children and their parents into scofflaws. And the youngest and poorest Californians are hurt most: “Nearly every group of students had high rates of absenteeism, but the highest rates were among kindergartners. Kindergartners who are Black, Pacific Islander or have disabilities all had rates of 50% or higher.”
Many factors contribute to the attendance crisis. Elementary school administrators report that parents got in the habit of keeping their children home at the smallest hint of a sniffle or stomach ache, for instance. Two-job parents sometimes keep older children home to look after younger ones.
But if California schools were great places to be, wouldn’t more people be there?
Starting right now, at the beginning of a school year, citizens need to lobby their local districts and state bureaucrats as well to shake things up before they disappear. The status quo is miserable. We need school choice so that parents are offered attractive alternatives. We need districts to take truancy seriously, rounding up kids who are not in class. And, an old-fashioned thing: we need teachers and school staff enthusiastic about their great mission. One Castroville mom says of a school secretary: “When we come in, she always says, ‘Hi!’ She’s always so happy to see us. The kids see she’s excited to be here, so they get excited. It works.”
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